


Leave My Death Alone (You Cannot Make It Yours)

by linearoundmythoughts



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Amnesia, Body Horror, Deception, Domestic Violence, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Manipulation, Murder, Mutilation, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resurrection, Revenge, Tags Updated Every Chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-01-06 02:28:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12202047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linearoundmythoughts/pseuds/linearoundmythoughts
Summary: After escaping Indian Hill, one of Hugo Strange's successful reanimation projects begins the arduous task of piecing together a life for herself after becoming an amnesiac during her resurrection. Not even able to recognize the face in the mirror, there's only a few things she knows about her existence: she woke up in with the name Edward Nygma on her lips, there's a photograph of someone she perfectly resembles in a stolen police evidence file, and it says he killed the woman whose sparse, short life is detailed inside.Without answers, she remains chained to a life she can't mentally recover, still presumed dead and free from all but her most-hidden terrors. Unless fate hasn’t unbound her yet.[An AU where Kristen Kringle and Isabella Flynn are the same person; begins in s2b, spans s3a, is canon-compliant until forced to divert from s3b canon.]





	1. Leave My Death Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in the works since January 2017. What started as my favorite "crack theory" to "explain Isabella" turned into me developing and writing the most ambitious (and darkest) fanfiction of my own to date. This story will explore some intense themes, but in order to truly tell the story of a character killed in the context of interpersonal relationship violence/abuse, there was no avoiding the grittiness of the situation. 
> 
> tl;dr I finally got to write then angry-and-fucked-up feminist fanfic I've always dreamed of a.k.a. this is the tale of how I became a Kristen Kringle stan. 
> 
> (Tagging this fic's trigger warnings will be possibly my greatest challenge with it; please feel free to PM me if there's tags I've missed in my attempt to account for everything. And thank you for checking this tale out.)
> 
> Thank you to [rathrunpredictabl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rathrunpredictabl/) for beta-ing and helping develop the direction of the story; you deserve more of a shout-out than I can possibly give, so this declaration is my way of showing you how grateful I am for your creative assistance.

* * *

**"leave my death alone / you did not lay a hand on this / you cannot make it yours"**  
  
— _Antigone_ by Sophokles; translated by Anne Carson

* * *

 

The first thing she’s aware of is the pain.

The second thing is a man’s voice, smooth and conciliatory.

“Hello, my dear. Shh. Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone anymore. I’m right here with you.”

_No, not him, not him!_

She howls, her entire body surging forward out of terror, and that’s how she discovers she’s strapped down, the restraints crushing into her torso, immobilizing her limbs. There’s something tight around her throat, pressing in, almost choking her, but when she thrusts her head forward, it is in fact the only part of herself that she can move freely.

“Now now, don’t thrash around, there’s no need for that. You must stay still. Your… _injuries_ need time to heal.”

 _Help me!_ A small thought, like a voice inside her mind pleads, and she pulls against the restraints again, only this time she realizes her body doesn’t _move_ correctly. It’s not just the restraints; she can’t rotate her limbs without excessive pain and difficulty. There’s a certainty to the instinctual way mind sends memo to the muscles, and the terror that something is gravely wrong waves over her.

Her hand feels connected to her by loose strings, instead of solid, bending wrist; the muscles and bones in her legs don’t feel attached in one continuous piece, like they should.

_That’s not normal._

There’s a quick moment of realization that she might actually _fall apart_ if she moves again; she stops immediately in response to the nauseating warning her body sends her. She goes completely still, hyperventilating. There’s something very, _very_ wrong with her. A bizarre discovery, but strong enough to chill her to the core.

Looking down, she tries to focus her blurry eyesight on her body. Why can’t she see clearly? The restraints feel thick; they hold her in place against some kind of reclining chair. What she _can_ see (above where the black bodysuit she’s wearing has rolled up her forearm) is a mess of red around her wrist. If only she could make out what it was…a bracelet? Blood? A wound?

The man comes in closer, close enough that now she can see he has on rose-colored glasses.

Recoiling away from him, filled with the instant, irrational panic that he’s going to clamp his hands over her mouth, her mind uselessly offers her up the fact that it’s an odd color for his glasses to be, which gives no rationale to her fright. Her breathing slows as she tries to make sense of the nonsensical.

“There. That’s better.” He laughs before speaking again. “I only have your best interests at heart, after all. Stay calm. You’ve been through quite a lot!” He smiles, or so she thinks—it’s hard to make out details. “Now, can you tell me who you are? Can you tell me your name?”

That should be a simple question, and she has no idea how to answer it. _My name?_

She can’t remember. Closing her eyes for a moment, she centers in on the concept. Name. What is her _name_? Why can’t she remember something that simple…can she remember _anyone’s_ name? Everything before this moment is coming up blank; if she forces a focus, she gets nothing back but a pounding static. It might hurt to think, yet the neural pain is nothing compared to the physical pain. Zeroing in on her own mind to try to create distance between both sets of agony produces nothing.

“Patient has no memory,” she hears a woman’s voice say.

Her throat _hurts_ , and she feels tears stream down her face.

“Subject has no recall—”

(The world flickers in and out as bright colors spark in her eyes; there’s a crunch.. A hand on her face, another around her throat…she thrashes and thrashes but it doesn’t do her any good. Then, the loud crunch.)

 _Oh god, that’s why my throat hurts,_ she pulls her eyes open wide, gasping. _It was broken. He’s breaking me! Help! He’s breaking me!_

“Edward Nygma!” she shouts, and the name comes out in a painful rasp. Her mind reels as her chest pounds. It’s the first name she can think of; in fact, it’s the only solid, tangible detail in her entire mind. She knows it’s a name; she can tell that much. No one responds. “It’s Edward Nygma!”

The man and woman remain silent until the man laughs again. “Goodness…no, my child. My sweet child. That is not your name, but what an interesting thing for you to remember. Do you know why you know that name?”

“We shouldn’t interfere with this—only document what the patient reveals on her own,” the woman warns. “She may have partial memories; we need to observe first.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” the man replies to whoever else that other voice is. “The salamander DNA is perhaps repairing her body _and_ her mind? Extraordinary.”

_What is he talking about?_

“Oh, what a _gift_ you are. Such a development,” he coos, facing her direction again. “We’ll have plenty of time to discuss what you know later. For now, rest.”

There’s a sting inside her forearm and the world slides out of focus after that. Right before it does, the pain recedes for a moment—the physical and mental. Except for her neck. That suffocating pressure follows her into the darkness.

⇸

If days pass, she’s not aware of them, or how to measure their passing. Trapped in a room by herself, with blank walls and glaring light overhead that never goes off, her ever-present restraints keep her strapped to the bed, with no one to talk to, no idea what’s going on, and no idea how she got here.

No matter how much she wracks her stinging brain, she has _no idea_ who she is.

So she screams, endlessly. Screams herself hoarse, screams until her throat is screaming back; she keeps going until her voice stops working and sound stops coming out.

The thought that she might actually be dead and in hell doesn’t just cross her mind; the irrational yet unprovable fear that she’s _right_ consumes her, and the terror makes her scream again.

They come in sometimes and drug her when she screams too much, which is helpful at first, until the drugs stop working and the pain cuts back through the haze. She screams when she’s dosed, screams when she’s half-asleep, screams until her voice is completely gone—if she waits long enough, it comes back, so quickly it feels unreal.

Sometimes she can twitch her wrists, or writhe a bit on the bed, which only makes her more and more aware that there’s something really wrong with her body. It feels like ‘body’ isn’t the right way to explain it; it’s like she’s made of weakly connected pieces. Not whole and solid, but divided, disjointed.

She knows she needs glasses; the blur across her eyesight never dissipates, so the conclusion became obvious. The faces of the people who come into her room are indistinguishable, just like the untrackable days and nights in their passing.

It would help to know _how_ she’s being kept alive; it feels like there’s tubes embedded in her torso, which must be how she gets water and nourishment. The tubes have to be how the painkillers are delivered as well. They still knock her out regularly enough; she has no idea what they do with her when she’s out, but she assumes they bathe her, because she never smells anything other than the sharp sting of chemical disinfectant, surely used in place of soap.

Since screaming doesn’t get her anywhere, after what feels like a few years in hell, she negotiates herself into calming down enough to speak to the people in the lab coats who come in her prison. She asks them to please tell her what day it is, what _year_ , what her name is, what this place is, where the doctor is.

No one responds; therefore, anger comes back into her blood more easily than any other emotion.

The orderly who came in today seems skittish, unlike the others; he seems to lack experience.

“Please stop yelling,” he asks, pitifully, hesitating to touch her.

“I’m not the only one who screams!” Wrestling against her bindings, she thrashes her head and snaps at him. “I can hear them through the walls! Everyone outside screams, too! What are you doing to us?” she bellows, tossing and flailing on the bed. He runs from her and leaves the door open behind him. Outside, she can see a mess of silver, gray, and white. Other doors? Her eyes are useless and she can’t make out details; another orderly comes in and sedates her.

The only day unlike the others starts when the screaming outside her room stops. A siren goes off later, and the lights start to flash. Over time, she’d started to get more control over her body. When before her limbs felt like they were going to fall off, now they feel whole. _More solid than before_ , if she had to explain in words. With a focused lurch, she tries to sit up, hoping she can break the restraints with enough force…when that fails, she lands back on the bed in an exhausted heap, her hair in her face, stuck to her lips, her entire body screaming out in pain.

_Her hair._

Staring at the mess of strands across her line of view, they glow orange-brown through the flashing fluorescent lights.

Is she a redhead? It’s the first clue she’s gotten since she woke up as to what she might look like, other than the few inches of pale skin and red wound around her wrist when she saw her arm.

Lying still, she breathes smoothly, afraid to have her hair fall off her face. As uncomfortable as the sensation of it is, it’s the only clue she’s gotten all this time as to who she might be, and there’s certainly comfort in _that_.

When the orderlies finally come into her cell, she hears them drop something heavy on the floor and the hiss of escaping air as they disconnect the tubes from her bodysuit.

Something bad is happening; she can sense it, so this time, she doesn’t scream, doesn’t utter a word. As horrible as this hell is, she doesn’t want something worse to happen; something deep in her intuition says _getting violent will only make this end badly, too_. The thought catches her mind’s attention and forces her to still in fear. The restraints are unbuckled (she can hear the sound) and replaced with new bindings: ankle to ankle, knee to knee, wrists together and pressed into her chest, arms strapped down against her torso, legs lashed together. The whole job is done so rapidly she has no time to respond.

Someone flicks the hair from her face, pulling the strands caught in her mouth down her cheek with their fingertip. Suddenly, there’s rose-colored glasses hovering over her face.

“You’re the doctor! You _have_ to be the doctor, you’re the only one who never comes in here.”

“Oh, my child. My jigsaw puzzle. Look how beautifully you’ve turned out, despite your complexity.”

“What is your name?” she asks, ignoring the meaningless drivel he’s said.

He smiles. “What is yours?”

“I remember you, I remember your glasses,” she counters, trying to keep his attention on her. “I need glasses,” she tries to pass it off as an observation and not a desperate request.

His forehead twitches. “Ah, so the DNA has limits. It won’t repair conditions that already existed. Well, no loss. I assumed it wouldn’t. When you look at what else it’s done…” he moves his eyes away from hers and steps back.

She stammers, trying to get him back into a conversation with her, but he moves on too fast.

“Load her into the box. I need to attend other business.”

The sound of his voice grows distant—he’s leaving. Trying again to call out for him, the orderlies hoist her up and start moving her, first into the air, and then back down. The smell of wood and paint soaks into her sense and she turns to see black walls on either side of her face. Twisting in her new constraints, she begs for someone to tell her what’s going on, but the orderlies’ faces are all impassive as they work to lower the lid, trapping her in darkness.

⇸

There’s more screaming outside. She is jostled inside the box, too terrified to scream herself. _How much air is in this thing?_ she wonders. If they were going to put her in a coffin, why not kill her first? The box lurches her around inside as she’s carried somewhere. There’s motion—the sound of a motor vibrates through the wood.

She tries counting the minutes, but fear makes it easy to lose track.

Later, there’s a massive crashing sound, and she’s thrown into the side of the box. The second shock wave comes when the box collides with something else and she’s crushed into the other side with the force of it.

It isn’t until she wakes up later that she realizes she must have lost consciousness.

There’s voices outside, all chattering away. The orderlies never speak like this—it hits her that these aren’t the same people. Light cracks though and the lid of the box is lifted away.

Two faces stare down at her: a round-faced girl with wavy blonde-brown hair and a woman with two different-colored eyes, one brown, one blue, with black hair, highlighted with pinkish red.

“Please, please let me out of here. I’m not going to hurt anyone! I don’t know why they restrained me, I didn’t do anything!” she begs, eyes flicking from the round-faced girl back to the other, the latter much calmer and seemingly more interested in what she has to say.

That woman looks down the length of the box as she speaks.

“I’m going to guess, from what I can see, that they’re there so you don’t hurt _yourself_.” The same woman looks her in the eyes again; the other is silent. “Do you know what happened to you?” she asks, her voice serene and somewhat soothing.

“No, I have no idea.”

The woman cocks her head to the side, her two-toned gaze piercing. “Do you know your name? Or did they try to give you a new one?”

She thinks about how to answer this time. “I think my name is Nygma?” she tests.

“‘ _Enigma_?’“ the woman offers. “That’s what they named you?”

“No, not ‘enigma,’ it’s…it’s my surname, it’s, uh, like…Edward Nygma?” She’s never forgotten that detail, even though it still has no context.

“I think her initials are ‘K.K.,’“ the round-faced girl offers, looking around.

“How so?” the black-haired woman asks. The wavy-haired one taps a panel, the click of her nail clicking off metal sounds out.

“Ah,” the woman replies. Turning back, the woman says, “Let’s get you out of there, then, and see if we can’t figure out who you _are_.”

⇸

The people who get her out of the box still end up having to carry her; she tried to walk on her own after they undid her restraints but she collapsed almost instantly, her muscles weak from disuse. After she hit the ground in a heap, a tall woman wearing some kind of face shield stepped forward and picked her up with ease, carrying her along the maze of streets they travel through like a doll. The group leader yells for everyone to follow her as she leads them to a deserted building, her cape billowing behind her with each step. Murmurs travel down the line that they’re headed to some kind of deserted building, a bank or something of the like.

A skinny blonde boy who stayed close to muzzled woman points a corner out to them, gesturing that it might be a good place to put her down; that was how she’d gotten in her current location. So weak, delirious, and in physical shock from the last few hours, she sits, gasping through the pain, propped against the wall and soaked in a cold sweat, when the round-faced woman from before comes over. She kneels down, their eye levels equal now. The blonde boy and tall woman approach as well, but remain standing.

“Marv found this box of folders and Sid and Nancy think they recognize you,” the soft-faced girl explains, handing said folder over.

None of that sentence means anything to her, but the photo immediately strikes her in the core of her chest. Looking into the eyes of a woman she’s never seen before hurts for some reason.

“We told Alice here, ‘Sure damn looks like her,’” the muzzled woman remarks, her voice muffled and distorted through the half-mask.

“That’s your name, Alice?” she asks, looking at the women kneeling beside her, who nods. The tall woman walks away before she has a chance to ask her her name as well.

Nodding in response, she takes the outstretched file, hand shaking, the scar around her wrist red, raw, and ugly, even at a distance. She’d been staring at the marks when she could make her eyes focus—there’s one at the base of each of her wrists, perfectly aligned, completely identical.

There’s a photo of a red-headed, bespeckled woman clipped to the front of the file, labeled _K. Kringle_.

“Is this what I look like?” Her voice is small. With the photo lifted close to her nose so she can try to see it clearly, something in her core sinks. The round-faced woman bites her lips before she nods.

She runs her finger along the dark brown cardboard of the folder. The material is thick, paper fibers mixed with fabric; it gives the folder a speckled dimension of color. It isn’t beautiful, but there’s something pleasant about it. It’s certainly better than looking down at her own skin.

“Strange had the orderlies load a bunch of files and equipment onto the bus,” Alice says.

Placing her fingertip down on the photo, she asks, “Could you let me know if anyone finds a pair of glasses?” tapping for emphasis.

“Yeah, of course,” Alice offers. “Try to…rest, ok?”

“Thank you,” she replies, tracing a finger over the name tag once more, before opening the file.

⇸

Kristen’s already read through all its contents about three times before any of it sinks in; she sits with it laid across her lap, staring at the photograph of her own face, processing.

That’s her name—Kristen—she knows that now.

He’d cut her into pieces. _Pieces_. That’s who ‘Edward Nygma’ was; his name was all over her file. That’s why she had the scars. That’s why everything hurt. Why she’d been immobilized, why her limbs felt like they were going to fall off all the time.

The one of her face made her head spin, so she didn’t focus on it for long. The file was full of enough photos that it didn’t matter. There were photographs of her entire body—something she still hadn’t even seen with her own two eyes yet.

The images were graphic and foreign. He’d done it with a small electric saw, it says. A tool from his workplace. _Their_ workplace. She worked at the very police station that ended up studying her murder, that photographed her corpse.

Corpse wasn’t the right word for it. She’d been a collection of body parts. _Pieces_. A jigsaw puzzle.

She handled it well at first, calm, laying the photographs back down in the folder when she was done staring. Then reality began to sink in, the unreal horror of it. It was hard to sit up, but somehow she forced her limbs to help carry her away, crawling on her hands and feet, getting away from the file as best she could. Not wanting to vomit until she was in private was her goal, but she collapsed not far from her corner.

The group leader is the one to approach her first, the same brown-and-blue-eyed woman who rescued her from the box and the restraints steps right over Kristen’s puddle of sick to crouch beside her, unfazed and still-faced. Rubbing Kristen’s back, the woman’s nails trace contact-soft circles through her bodysuit, before pulling her into a one-armed embrace.

Kristen couldn’t remember her life, that was a give-in, but she swore everything she was currently feeling had to be foreign to her, regardless.

“What am I?” Kristen sobs, hugging herself, her hands wrapped around the scars from where he’d severed her arms in half.

“Your name is Kristen,” the woman grabs Kristen by the jaw, not gently but not harshly, and turns her head to face her, “and I’m Fish Mooney.” Kristen’s world is still a blur without her glasses, but those two-toned eyes are piercing enough to be clearly seen. “And you’re one of us now.”

 

 


	2. You're the One Who Showed Up to Begin With

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kristen tries to move on with her life: she gets a job, a fake ID, a place to live, even a new side project. It's the recipe for a life, isn't it? Yet everything feels empty, no matter how relatively well it's going.
> 
> Starting over might be impossible when you can't start fresh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I am _so sorry_ for the delay in updating! I thought I would be able to write the entire fic over the course of Nanowrimo this year, but instead, I ended up working on a lot of other things (you can check my works page to see most of them). Chapters will come more regularly now—I hope! 
> 
> Thank you to my beta and creative "jamming" partner on this project, [rathrunpredictabl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rathrunpredictabl/) (can you believe we've worked on this almost a year?) and to [Lyrae_Immortalis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrae_Immortalis/) for also beta-ing/proofing and giving some great feedback. I love working with you both so much, thank you ♡

* * *

**“Don’t blame the world for how it wants to get its hands around your throat—you’re the one who showed up with a throat to begin with.”**

— “Learning to Breathe Water” by Sam Sax

* * *

 

“Kristen. Kristen.”

The soft voice, and even more delicate shake of her shoulder, rouses her from a sleep she wasn’t aware she fell into. There’s water dripping from the ceiling nearby into the gutter and the constant hum of the generators in the main room stopped irritating her and pulled her to sleep instead. _Exhaustion will do that_ , she supposes.

“ _Kristen_ ,” the voice urges again, rocking her wearily. _That’s my name_ , her mind snags on the word, loops it through her mind. Kristen. Kristen.

She thought it would take more training to answer to it, but it’s fast becoming normal. Natural.

Lifting her head, she blinks bleariness out of her eyes. “Alice?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Her friend looks concerned, face close enough for Kristen to discern expression.

Kristen shakes her head. “No, I know, I just—what’s the matter? You sound—”

“ _Shhh_ ,” Alice begs, holding a careful hand up, looking behind her. “I don’t want to wake the others.”

“Are you—is something wrong?” Kristen realizes she fell asleep sitting up again, her side shoved painfully into the wall, muscles stiff.

“No. _Yes_ ,” Alice shakes her head, not side-to-side, but diagonally, creating a worried, little circle. “It’s nothing that’s not been the matter before. Are you _sure_ you’re ok?”

“Who, me?” Kristen’s confused. “I’m…the same as before, I’m pretty sure?”

And it’s true. In fact, she’s been improving the last two days. So far she’s stood up _once_ without any assistance, and managed to stay upright for a few minutes, before gravity, over-exertion, and her weak limbs brought her tumbling down. _Not bad_ for someone whose extremities needed to be reassembled and reattached—at least, those were Alice’s remarks, after Kristen let her read her file.

Walking is manageable, if she has something to hold onto, and Alice has been that some _one_ most of the time, always gentle, always graciously willing to lend Kristen an arm, even though half the time Alice is bracing all of Kristen’s weight upright, and the other half of the time Alice struggles to save Kristen’s face from meeting the floor by catching her when she crumbles.

Alice is _softness_ personified to Kristen. After so many months (she learns from the others the frightening stretch of white-box restrained hell-time was likely _months_ ) alone and frightened and in pain, Alice’s kindness brings tears to Kristen’s eyes. Her soft, wavy hair; her gentle, soothing voice, strong with conviction and hidden strength, always comforting, always understanding; her round face, her wide eyes—it’s easy to see she’s only a few years younger than Kristen, but hard to believe she’s not older in soul.

Those eyes give away that she’s seen so much. Kristen wonders _what_. Alice hasn’t shared much about herself in return, whereas Kristen has been open about all the details she has.

What’s the point in being secretive? Krisen can’t find one. What happened to her—they’re just words on a page, facts in a file, details Kristen can’t recall, stories she has no emotional connection to other than _horror_. And what a concept—the privilege of a narrative all yours to possess and shape as you want. Things like that, the basics of a basic human life, are still out of her reach.

Kristen might not know much about her own life before this, but there remain so many ways her mind perceives the world, the people in it, as if she never missed a _day_ of it. For some reason, Kristen knows Alice is soft in _spite_ of a life that’s been horrible, and not in _light_ of one that’s been kind.

Even without the police file with her own name on it, Kristen knows she would’ve related easily to that weariness in Alice; she possesses it too, without being able to name why.

Maybe the soul doesn’t forget what the mind lets go of so easily.

“Before I…I wanted you to know first that…I have to leave,” Alice says, looking down at the ground between them. “I wish I could stay—I wish I could stay to help you more, I’m worried about you, but I _can’t_.”

Kristen’s eyebrows furrow. “Is Fish throwing you out?”

There’s something _special_ about Alice—there’s something special about _all of them_ —all of them but Kristen. She doesn’t know each of their particular… _conditions_ , but she knows _of_ the situation, knows that there’s some grand irony at play in how gentle Alice looks, versus how dangerous her DNA claims her to be.

“No, _no_ , I think Fish’d _love_ for me to stick around for…I don’t even want to get into why,” Alice worries her wrists together, something Kristen has seen her do before.

“It’s whatever the doctor did to you back at that place, isn’t it?” Kristen head sags. Even though she tries to keep Alice’s eyes in focus, she’s tired already and it’s a challenge.

“No, I’ve had this since birth, actually.” Alice looks around again and leans in closer. “You know how the man who…who did this to you—”

“Who _killed me_ ,” Kristen corrects, needing the _lifeline_ the concrete words give her, needing to call what was _done to her_ by its proper name.

Alice nods. “A man hurt me, too. Wants to keep hurting me. He’s hunting me, I can…sense it. And I need to go hide before he comes here and finds me, finds you, finds all of you. I’m…dangerous to be around, and that’s not the only reason why.”

Kristen’s chest fills with ice. “I can help you…I mean, I know I’m no good like this, but I _want_ to help you—”

Alice pulls her into a hug, unexpected. “Just the fact that you wish that means a lot, Kris. Thanks.”

 _Kris_. That nickname makes Kristen’s heart ache. _She shortened my name so casually._ Nicknames mean you matter to someone, mean you _are_ someone, enough that people give you more than one name. Did she have any in her former life? That’s not something that will ever be in a file; the little details of life are always the things that get skipped—another fact Kristen knows she just _knows_.

How she managed to earn not one, but two names thanks to this woman in such a short timeframe brings tears to her eyes.

“Ask Fish for help, she’s been kind to me so far. Please don’t go, I’m afraid I’ll never see you again—”

Alice pats Kristen hair, sniffling; she drops her head level to Kristen’s for a minute, and pulls her into a hug, arms looped loosely around Kristen’s shoulders, where it hurts less than most everywhere else.

“I don’t know how or when, but I’ll find you again, okay?” Alice pats the back of Kristen’s head once more, before she pulls back. “Stick with Fish; you’re right, you’ve got a good thing going when it comes to her. And take care of yourself, alright? Maybe you’ll get your memories back. Please don’t give up. You inspire me so much.” She hugs Kristen again, quickly, and grabs her knapsack, shrugs it on and leaps to her feet, cutting their conversation.

“If you find the bastard,” Kristen chokes out, voice a growl she’s never heard herself use before, “kill him.”

“I will if I can,” Alice stares back, the magnitude of the moment passing through both of them, then starts when she hears sound come from behind her. It’s pre-dawn and the others are waking.

“I won’t forget you,” Kristen whispers, studying Alice’s face one last time.

“You either, Kris—you either.”

And with that last exchange, Kristen lolls her head back and lets her tears fall as she listens to Alice’s soft steps slowly move away, into the distance behind her.

⇸

“And you’re certain of this?” Fish asks, brows drawn back, hand suspended mid-air, elbow bent. She traces the shape of Kristen’s face, her hair, without even touching her— _analyzing me_ , Kristen notes. They’re standing in one of the only still-standing offices in the burnt-out building they’re currently hiding in. Kristen dragged herself in here, to have an audience with Fish, who occupies the space opposite Kristen, across the makeshift desk. It’s not wide, the distance between them; in a way, they might as well be sitting side-by-side—if there were chairs.

They haven’t spoken much since their introduction; Fish has had too much to do to settle everyone into to deal with Kristen (who has been doing little of anything outside of struggling).

Standing with the aid of a makeshift walking stick, about as tall as herself, long and sturdy enough that she can leverage her whole body weight against it, Kristen gulps down the nerves and agony of standing before Fish, feeling like a beggar in front of a queen. She suppresses the instinct to move away when Fish steps even closer, as she scrutinizes Kristen even more. Gripping the stick tighter, Kristen’s sweat-slicked palms start to drive splinters into her skin; the pain _should_ be barely noticeable, but it’s hard to ignore.

“I can’t see what good I provide anyone here,” Kristen finally says, clutching tightly to the wood to drag herself more upright; she’s sagging a little with quickly-expending energy. Her muscle pain never abates, and she’s always in a constant sheen of sweat, breath labored, every moment a challenge. That being said, she has regained enough mobility now that she can get around, which to her is the sign that it’s time to stop relying on Fish’s charity in not _throwing_ her out.

Fish is silent.

“I don’t…I’m not like the rest of you,” Kristen stumbles through an explanation. Her legs are burning and she shoves the stick against her chest, so she can lean full-bodied against it. “There’s nothing special about me. I was a dead woman Hugo Strange brought back to life because…because he could.”

“I, too, am a _dead woman_ , brought back from the abyss, for no reason other than that man’s own hubris and experimentation. Does that make me _not_ special?”

“ _No_ ,” Kristen shakes her head for emphasis, wincing. _That was a stupid move; you know your neck is what hurts the most. Thank god he didn’t cut your head off! Like the rest doesn’t hurt enough! Imagine if he’d taken that bone saw to it, the one they presented as evidence at the trial…_

She wants to scream at her own mind to shut up.

“No, you are special. You…you _remember_ yourself, for one thing. You were someone of note before this, too. And you have…” Kristen gulps, look at Fish’s hands; she’s seen what Fish is capable of, the rippling, iridescent shimmer that overtakes Fish’s skin, glows from the inside out, compels people to do her bidding with a single touch of her fingertips—sometimes a touch from her lips. It poisons people into doing what she needs, what she wants. It’s horrifying. It’s _amazing_. Kristen is floored it’s even possible.

Fish is waiting for Kristen to make an adequate point, and Kristen falters, stumbling into her next thoughts. “Alice brought the radio over one night, so I could…get updated. I missed some time, after all.”

“As did I,” Fish arches her eyebrows again, leaning back on a heel so she can track her eyes along the rest of Kristen, no doubt studying what a sorry, ugly sight she is, branded in angry, revolting, _symmetrical_ incisions. Alice found a half-moth eaten dress in the trash and a shabby, unraveling sweater for Kristen to wear, so she could finally unzip the bodysuit she’d been in, which was making her skin hurt more than it was helping with compressing the severed pieces of herself together.

“They call us monsters,” Kristen bites her lip, then adds, “people with _powers_ …I think they mean people like you. The ice man, the girl with the big…gun-pack?” she gestures to her back to explain what she means. They’d been two of the first escape party members to leave. Their numbers are dwindling, between voluntary exits and murderous attacks on anyone too visibly strange-looking to be on the streets. “I’m not one of you,” Kristen huffs out, not in tone but in labored breathing, sweaty palms making her slide down the pole she grips. “Trust me, I wish I _was_. Wish I’d gotten something out of this instead of nothing.”

Fish glowers at her. “You got your _life_ back.”

“It’s not a life that does me any good. I don’t remember any of it. My file says I have no living family. No idea about friends, but I don’t think I should go looking. I’m gonna guess I had a bad track record with all that, seeing as I ended up getting myself killed by becoming close with the wrong person.”

“This life still _belongs_ to you. My…” Fish pauses. “Let’s call him _my son_ , for simplicity’s sake. I had a…hand in _creating_ who he grew to become. He’s the one who killed me.” She shrugs off Kristen’s expression (no doubt giving away her bewilderment). “Oh, don’t look appalled, you don’t come from the world I do. It was a fair fight. We were _gangsters_. There’s not even a drop of anger left in me over it—I tried to do the same to him, many times.

“I know your case is different,” she intones, stepping forward…Kristen almost retreats back again, unsure what Fish is trying to _touch her for_ …until she feels the gentle brush of her own hair being tucked behind her ear, “but you are alive, as unfair as it was the first time—perhaps your resurrection was as random a happenstance of the universe as your conception. Banal, but human. We all suffer it. The struggle…to make _something_ of _nothing_.”

Fish turns and walks back toward the nearby makeshift table (Kristen hadn’t even realized Fish had stepped away from behind it) and starts rummaging through a plastic box on the surface.

“In the brief time we’ve just spoken, I’ve already noticed at least six traits you possess that would benefit anyone you aligned yourself with.” Fish speaks so smoothly, it feels like the sound of flowing water to Kristen. “No wonder you had such an important role at the station. Not anyone can be trusted with handling evidence and documentation that’s part of an _investigation_.”

Fish pulls something out of the box with a soft _a-ha_ and returns to Kristen. “I’m no drug pusher. I might’ve allowed it in my club, but I never encouraged my girls _or_ my men to fuck around with any of it.” She waves a bottle of pills at Kristen, cap forward, waiting for Kristen’s reaction. “There’s no point in you enduring to this extent.” Fish explains, shaking the bottle once more. “You can be an exception. Twice over.”

Kristen scrunches her eyes shut. Half the reason she feels so weak has to be withdrawal—she remembers the frequent shots, and no doubt she was on a painkiller drip for a long period of her recovery, one of the many tubes sunk into her body, all those openings in her suit….

Her memory loss makes no sense—she knows how to finely-tune a radio, how to read, how to memorize _what_ she reads quickly, knows what the symptoms of narcotic withdrawal are—the only parts of her brain that have been stolen from her seem to be the ones that are _personal_ , not practical.

It’s not a hard decision to yank the bottle from Fish’s hand, and dry-swallow the first three pills that touch her mouth when she pops the top and tips the bottle to her lips.

“Don’t make a decision now,” Fish watches Kristen’s shaking hands as she reapplies the lid and hides the bottle in her sweater pocket, surely noting that Kristen didn’t offer the bottle _back_. “But I could put you to work for me easily. And, as you know, when your friend chose differently, you _are_ allowed to leave.”

“Thank you,” Kristen says, the edges of the world sparking already.

Staring at her with conviction, Fish nods. “Any woman who has survived what you have is a woman already possessing powerful traits.” Her tone is unlike any voice Kristen’s heard her use so far—she sounds like she’s hiding tears.

Kristen isn’t lucky enough to be able to hide her own effectively.

“Thank you,” she repeats, and then again, nodding at Fish. “I’m…going to…rest. For a moment.”

“Of course,” Fish says softly. She waves through the air with a swipe of her arm. “As long as you need.”

⇸

True to Alice’s word, Fish has been a grand help. She had Kristen fitted for a pair of glasses; she procured Kristen a small collection of clothes that she can call all her own. Fish knows people; Fish is reconnecting herself to her connections. Kristen can’t help but think it’s fascinating to watch Fish reconnect the severed limbs of her former life to her new self.

Fish gave her the option to stay, and _stay_ is what Kristen has done, in ways, for the last few weeks, staying with the group, as she slowly extends the limbs of her own new-found existence, reaching out to touch something that may touch her _back_ , give her insight and solace and _normalcy_. Piece by piece, Fish has been helping her make her makeshift second life legitimate. The painkillers are now “prescription”; being able to sleep at night has done wonders for Kristen’s overall condition. The human body is stubborn, even without abnormal, jacked-out science modified into her DNA; the body longs for stability and stasis, and for wrists that rotate without the fear that hands will fall off.

Sometimes Kristen swears the scars look like they’re fading in severity. Muscles move with more fluidity, more ease. Her bones ache less; her skin stretches as it should. It’s odd, but she’s grateful to have the burden of being defined by physical pain lessen.

Soon, she’ll be outfitted with legitimate identification, once Fish tracks down a man she knows can get a job like that done.

Kristen feels a bit more whole than before, standing in front of the mirror in the apartment Fish has rented for her, adjusting her new glasses. The freedom in having accurate sight is nothing short of a blessing, after going without it for so long.

She’s pinned the photo of herself from her file between the glass and the frame, eyes tracking back and forth as she takes it all in. The same face—it really is the same, identical face…she really is the same person. No one lied. There’s no room for being mistaken, either. The phantom limb of missing memory is soothed by the now-forever destroyed falsehood of stand-in or mistake. She is the same woman, just emptier this time, just working on learning her own name. The fake name will be a balm to her confused soul. A healthy one? _Only if you think it gives you a new, better story_ , her mind taunts.

Kristen’s not really concerned with health anymore. What’s the goal, a long life that staves off death, a sound mind that rejects any inkling of insanity?

It’s a little too late for all of that.

⇸

She has to start somewhere. The library doesn’t seem like a bad choice.

There’s archives of newspapers there—not only can she find out what’s happened in the time she’s been… _absent_ from Gotham City life, she can also conduct research into her own case. Find out if there are any details that have been forgotten. Any details at all would be of interest to her at this rate. No one’s recognized her, in the few times she’s ventured off from Fish’s “monster” camp, and there’s no way anyone would come looking for her, anyway, since there’s no logical reason to assume she’s not still dead.

Seeking out life after death sounded so exciting, but it feels far from anything of the sort.

Maybe if she was trying to find her murderer, or discover the cause of her untimely death, she would feel like the heroine of some exciting story. But the truth is much blander—by its very nature, it’s undefined and shapeless. There’s no grand mystery to solve (she already knows what happened), and no one will be better in the end for her sleuthing it out. No, what she’s lost she seems unlikely to ever recover—an identity, a history, a purpose.

Revenge is out of the question, too, which Kristen assumes is a blessing in disguise. She thinks of Alice often, on her mission to free herself from future disaster, and Kristen feels miserable that she’s jealous, instead of grateful, but her bored, empty mind is probably fooling her into thinking it would’ve been better some other way.

She’s made it further than she ever thought she would when she was stranded and strapped down in that sterile faux-hospital room, screaming like a banshee, trying to drag someone down to her own level who could stand to look her in the face, let her look _herself_ in the face, and give a name to what they see, a name she would _recognize_ , a key that would unlock the door to her own life.

Instead, she’s just _alive_ , which seems to be better than when she was assorted body parts in a leather trunk, but still, it doesn’t give her much to go by.

The yearbooks she finds give her some hints about the woman’s body she’s been tossed into living inside again.

 _Kristin_ Kringle (that typo is pervasive and shows up in a number of places, even the _Gotham Gazette_ ) seemed as average in her early life as she was an an adult. Four years in a row she was stage manager of the spring play in high school (always Shakespearean tragedies, too—she can’t tell if _Kristin_ found that boring or not, for she wears the same toothy smile in every cast and crew photo, glasses too big, hair just the side of too frizzy to ever be wavy in a pleasing way).

Kristen scrutinizes the picture from her junior year— _Romeo and Juliet_ —and it hits her why it’s standing out—she knows the plot by heart.

She knows…the entire play. She _remembers it_.

Not anything about having stage managed a high school production of it, nothing about high school at all, or about why she always has on such similar-looking outfits, who embroidered her initials on her collars, or why she was even involved in theater (her senior year book mentions she enjoyed accounting and book-keeping, but planned to attend Otisburg Community College and study library science, ironically). The curse persists; Kristen remembers nothing of her own life. But she knows _Romeo and Juliet_ like she’s just read it.

She ends up checking out _The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare_ anyway, clutches the worn, leather-bound volume close as she leaves, and comes back to the library the next day, and the next, and most days after that.

⇥

The man taking her photograph tells her to smile again, and this time it’s nothing more than a pained mockery of what a grin should look like.

“No, tip you head, like this.” he demonstrates; she complies. He shoves the round webcam in her face and his computer makes the same annoying, artificial _click_ noise again.

“How many more of those are you going to take?” Fish gripes, leaning forward into his face. Somehow it’s like she snarls at him without even opening her mouth or moving much of her face.

“Nothing’s changed with you, Fish, not even a watery, yet clearly _temporary_ grave,” he quips, rolling the tracker ball on his computer’s mouse violently, then slamming something into the keyboard again with rapid motions she’s surprised don’t break his own fingers. “You were always on my ass to do these as fast as possible, and at the last damn moment!”

Fish raises a finger and jabs it in his direction. “And you still have a _mouth_ on you, always as stupid as possible!”

“Please,” Kristen interrupts, softly, not sure if she should get in the middle of this. “I appreciate what Mr. Zhang is doing for me. What you both are doing for me. It’s fine if it takes time to formulate my new ID.”

“Thank you,” he nods at her, widening his eyes at Fish with a slight flair of his nose, to flaunt that he’s won. “I have to try to find a woman in the database I can swap you out with—it’s better if it’s a close match facially, everything is just simpler to swap then, I don’t have to reprogram any—”

“There’s still a chance for you to get plastic surgery,” Fish offers, voice low. “I’ll find someone, someone _real_ , no chop-shop shit like you get with _this one_.”

“No.” The adamency in Kristen’s voice surprises her, once she hears it come out of her own chest, but the motivation behind it is all too well-known. “This face is the only thing I have of my own. Sometimes, I swear I’m starting to even recognize it.” Her face, and her hair color, are two things Kristen refuses to change, for they’re all she had when she was at her most lost.

Sighing pointedly, Fish nods, and Kristen already can tell she’ll never bring it up again.

“Please don’t tell me I’m doing all this for nothing, if the lady’s plannin’ on changing her face,” Zhang whines, peeking out from behind the computer screen. Fish is about to bark at him again when Kristen cuts in first.

“Does it help if they’re dead?”

Zhang blinks at her, hands hovering over the keyboard. “Yeah, of course they have to be dead. No one goes looking at dead womens’ driver’s licenses to see if they’re still dead…”

 _Hopefully, no one goes looking for dead women at all_ , Kristen’s inner monologue is eager to point out. _Too bad you lack the self-preservation to go under the knife…then again, who is left to even remember you? No one has in all this time._

“All my immediate next-of-kin are dead,” Kristen speaks over her own thoughts, wanting to stay on task. “I read about them in…some paperwork I found.” She read about them, all listed as having preceded her in death, in her obituary; she was the last of her family to die, something the author took great theatrics with pointing out. “Including my mother and a sister. Would that help, or make things more difficult?”

“Definitely the former. The sister, is she biological?” Zhang twists his head a little.

“Presumably. I don’t know. I don’t remember her.”

“Mother’s too old, I’m guessing. You’re young-looking, it’s not worth the headache. How do you not remember? Fine, Fish, fine, I hear you tapping your damn nails again, I’m getting back to it. What’s the sister’s name, surname Kringle,” he taps out the name on his keyboard “First name?”

“No, not Kringle. My mother remarried, my father died when I was young.”

Zhang waves his hand, waiting for Kristen to continue.

“Sorry. Her second husband’s name is Flynn.”

“And?”

Kristen swallows, mind flicking back through the words she’d memorized on second-readthrough. “Her name’s Isabella. Try ‘Isabella Flynn.’”

He types, rumpling his hair absentmindedly with one hand while he stares at the screen, the computer churning and groaning, dial-up connection clacking and dinging as it processes his newest query.

Fish switches her attention to studying Kristen again, uninterested in terrorizing Zhang into efficiency any longer. She’s used to being under Fish’s scrutinizing gaze. It’s not wholly unpleasant. There’s nothing predatory about it—it’s as if Fish is just intrigued by the oddity that Kristen is. The only born-again project of Strange’s…who is as normal as any average human. A success, and still, somehow, a failure. Every single other one of them has _changed_ somehow, and yet Kristen is still the same woman she was before. Unremarkable. A domestic violence victim. An orphan with no family left.

Forgettable.

_Hopefully._

Kristen’s considered that maybe Fish _relates_ to her somehow, for being another uniquely odd result of the demented science that took place at Indian Hill. They share an unexpected similarity—they were never brainwashed into thinking they’re mythical creatures, or fictional characters, or some other bizarre falsehood. Fish, due to knowing herself fully, and Kristen, simply due to neglect.

Kristen stares back at Fish this time, wondering if they are actually having the nonverbal conversation she feels is somehow flowing between the both of them, or if she’s projecting.

“Well, damn. That’s biological, for sure. Lookit.” Zhang turns the decrepit-looking large computer monitor around. It slowly squeals in protest as he pushes it, needing to lean forward to finish the job.

Rearranging her glasses, Kristen leans in to look. _Oh._

“It’s not the same face, but hell, might as well be compared to what I was looking at before. You two are definitely sisters, even with different dads. Says here she died two years ago in Metropolis. I usually don’t look there, try to keep it in-city. Anyway. Details loading here soon…damn thing is so slow…ahhh—suicide. No investigation—she left a note, had a documented history of depression.” He blinks as Kristen bites her lip hard. “Sorry. I forget about your…brain…” he waves his hand. “Didn’t mean to be too blunt there.”

“It’s alright.” She leans back and smoothes down her skirt—also new, also courtesy of Fish, who has been going out of her way to assist Kristen with reintegrating back into Gotham. Alice was right about her. _Don’t think about another forgotten woman’s life or you mind is going to crack. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it._

“Can you _use it_?” Fish sighs, her exasperation palpable.

“Yeah, this is _ideal_. Thank you—you’re on your way to becoming a new woman. So, what state am I putting down?”

“I’m sorry?” Kristen asks.

“What state are ya moving to after you bust town?”

“I’m not leaving…”

Zhang leans forward, with his arm balanced against the desk. “All this, so you can stick around here? Look, Miss, I don’t know what you’re running _from_ , but that’s not the wisest choice—”

“I’ve lived here all—” the words get caught in Kristen’s throat, “a-all my life. I’m not leaving.” _Why would I bother? To go where?_

“Just make the documents, Zhang!” Fish sneers at him.

“Yeah, yeah, gimmie a few, hell! Look, do you wanna have her become someone else or not? She’s not leaving town, damn. Whelp—in a few minutes, I can make-play officiant and welcome you to Gotham City as its newest resident!” He lunges forward, tugs Kristen’s glasses off before she can protest, and takes one last picture.

⇻

Sometimes Fish asks her to look things up. Sometimes Fish tells her why.

After a few weeks, she’s managing the backend of most of Fish’s business, which gives her something to do when the articles run out, when the paper trail of newspapers starts only drawing up blanks.

There’s some names Fish only enquires about once or twice. Jim Gordon. Carmine Falcone. Others are constant, on-going searches. Hugo Strange. Oswald Cobblepot.

Kristen jots notes (not like she can’t simply memorize it…not that she can help that she seems to _automatically_ memorize things that she reads…but having dates and specifics on record can only help) and Xeroxes helpful-looking articles, starts a mini-file system of them all for Fish, in case she needs to reference them.

it’s enjoyable, working for Fish. The familiarity of what Kristen does seems pretty obvious when she considers her former profession, and the hint also hidden in her teenage-interests. The Gotham Midtown Public Library is gothic and strange and dark and Kristen loves spending time in it, wonders if she ever came in on a ferry or train or bus from the suburbs as a child and got to see it. Is that where the interest in archiving and retrieving information came from? Was she as inspired by the leather-bound binders the newspapers are preserved in, the mahogany ladders that roll along the shelves, ladders Kristen’s legs are steady enough to climb now, heavy binders Kristen’s arms are strong enough to carry now?

It’s not long until she starts reshelving other people’s books when she needs to clear off a table, or when she rearranges herself a row of volumes she can’t help but notice is ordered incorrectly. Since she spends all day there, on the days she can take off from acting as something akin to Fish’s secretary, she gets a lot of questions from people about where things are located—sometimes even from the staff. She fits in, retro glasses, flat shoes, plain dresses and knitted cardigans. The head librarian doesn’t even look as stereotypical as she does, and he wears _tweed_ everyday.

The day he finally asks her _Why don’t you just work here?_ she scoffs, clutching her legal pad full of notes and the three books she just found hidden in between the stacks, cloth covers caked with dust from being forgotten in the seams, her long hair sneaking out from the messy bun she wiped it up into.

Explaining that she’s just a loyal patron (and grateful that her sleeves are slightly too long, hiding her scars) she tries to sidestep away, but he jumps in front of her first, explaining that he’s _serious_ , extending a paper application her way.

She pulls it out of his hands just so she can move on, it’s not until later that she studies it by late-night lamplight, cosied in the corner of the newest hideout she and Fish’s gang have occupied. Kristen’s been collecting articles written by Valerie Vale (Fish thinks the woman’s on to something about the group), and she’d shoved the application in the pile of photocopied sheets.

Once, she had wanted to strike out on her own, before she had any sort of purpose…but the two could mutually co-exist, she rationalizes. The group is desperate to find a cure for their abnormalities; Fish is the most determined of them all, and Kristen doesn’t doubt there’s something going on that Fish hasn’t told anyone else about yet. It’s no problem for Kristen to let her have her secrets—she’s done so much for Kristen, how could she begrudge her anything? But whatever the problem is, this might be a way Kristen can _help_. An excuse to get into the off-limits parts of the library, meet some of the city’s brightest minds?

Clicking her pen, Kristen leans forward and writes “her name” in the first black field on the application. She’s been using that library card all this time—might as well put the driver’s license and social security number to good use, as well….

⇻

“Remain here, then. Be my eyes and ears in Gotham,” Fish requests on the eve of her departure from the city, and Kristen immediately complies, nodding.

The most remarkable part of the whole exchange is that Fish doesn’t touch her once.

She’s never once used _that power_ her rebirth has bestowed her on Kristen; that confirms Kristen’s suspicion that Fish sees her as something closer to an _equal_ than a pawn, or a tool, or something Fish needs to bend to her will.

Fish has shown Kristen nothing but respect since the moment they met—so, she’ll happily help however she can.

Still, life is very lonely now, and Kristen wishes she’d left with them, but she knew she had no place, not truly, not outside of Fish’s bewildering kindness.

⇻

There’s lots of articles about Maria Mercedes Mooney, and Kristen reads every single one, one slow afternoon. The fearsome cruelty she showed those in the mob, juxtaposed with her manners and grace, reminiscent of a time period gone by (as many profiles of her as a business owner and big-name in Gotham City note, and all of which Kristen herself agrees with, based on firsthand experience) intrigue Kristen immensely.

She seems to like complex people. People with hidden elements, multiple sides.

They feel more relatable than people who are only one person at a time.

⇻

 

Her library job (or, should she say, _Isabella_ ’s) goes well. Work is sometimes stressful, sometimes boring. She’s put in charge of maintaining the filing of the decimal system index cards, after they have her take a brief test at her first interview, to see where her greatest skills lay. Being assigned to the filing room means she doesn’t have to spend a grand deal of time with others, which suits her just fine. The few times she _does_ interact with others aren’t bad—and they certainly have a great use. More and more she learns how to become someone—become another—inhabit a new name and persona that is fitting of the small life she’s eking out for herself in a strange new body, and an even odder world.

There’s things about Gotham she remembers—who the mayor was, where certain landmarks are located, the historical significance of certain quarters of the city, the parts of town that are considered trendy, or seedy, and why. There’s names she spots in the paper every day that are familiar—Wayne Enterprises, owned by an orphaned, now-teenaged son. Mayor Aubrey James, though parts of the scandal surrounding him are certainly new to her (and _bizarre_ ).

The GCPD headquarters is mentioned regularly.

Her murderer _isn’t_. Thankfully, he’s locked up in Arkham Asylum, his sentencing severe enough (his body count _three_ ; one before her—a boyfriend she doesn’t remember having—and one after—a cop she doesn’t remember knowing) that he won’t see Gotham’s streets again the rest of Kristen’s life…well, the length of time Kristen assumes it will take for her to die of old age.

Which isn’t a give-in anymore, if she looks at her track record, but there’s no other fate she can see on her horizon, so the comparison will have to do.

The secret finally comes out about her patron-turned-boss—Fish is _dying_. Nothing is guaranteed them in this new attempt at life, Kristen supposes, though it is unfair…out of all the people who Kristen would happily see rot, of course it’s one of the only connections to anything decent she has who is afflicted with an illness neither of them can fight. No one can—except Hugo Strange.

Once Fish finds him, she plans to leave the city, go into hiding with the others who are like her (and still loyal to her), to see if Hugo can concentrate on fixing their problems. There’s no point in going, Kristen argues: there’s nothing he can do to benefit her. He gave her back life, complete with a mostly-empty head, glued the broken bits, and hopefully, somewhere, a soul, though _that_ is out of the domain of everyone involved, even Kristen, even _Nygma_.

And in this way, Kristen assumes, her relationship with Fish will come to its natural conclusion.

It’s best if she thinks of herself in terms of books. When new ones come in, she creates the file card for them, entering them into the system. Each card needs to be placed in its proper drawer, filed correctly, based on author and title and subject and topics and year of publication, year of reprint. Kristen’s a _reprint_. A book once run, then run out of print, and brought back, to be republished, to be rediscovered, again. When books such as these land on her desk, she gives them a moment’s hold, something like a hug, before sorting them on the cart, and escorting them to their new homes.

They come back again, and if she could, she would ask them if it feels at all fulfilling, or as empty as it does still for her.

“Looks like you’re doing alright for yourself,” a voice behind her whispers one day, with a knowing, warm tone to it, when Kristen’s in the stacks, and she feels her heart leap into her throat, has to clamp a hand around her mouth to keep from screaming. No one’s ever recognized her before, why now, why—

“ _Alice!_ ” Kristen can’t believe she’s here! Same round face and soft curls as always, same subtle smile and unsure eyes.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you and freak you out,” Alice bites her lip. “Fish let me know where you were at, and I didn’t get to come see you till now—congrats on the job, by the way.”

Kristen grabs Alice in a tight hug—something she can do now, with minimal pain.

“Holy shit, you’re strong! Stronger than I remember!” Alice laughs and holds Kristen back; they sway a bit with the force of their embrace.

“Most of the daily actions of living don’t bother me anymore. I’ve been getting much, much better,” Kristen explains, her voice muffled in Alice’s scarf, her face perched on Alice’s shoulder. “Thank you for…for finding me, for coming to visit me!”

“I missed you, Kris. I’m really, really glad you’re doing alright.”

“ _More_ than alright—I…I have a whole new _life_ thanks to Fish.” _And thanks to the untimely demise of everyone else close to you, don’t forget._ Kristen doesn’t feel _good_ about her new life, but every day she hopes is the day she can convince herself living a lie is a decent way to live a second life.

That living a second life has meaning at all.

That ignoring the unremembered past makes it unreal.

“Looks like you’re doing good things with it.” Alice pulls back and smiles, both her hands on Kristen’s shoulders. “Your hair is _so long_ now!”

Kristen considers it as she brushes it back behind her ears. “I’m fond of the color, I don’t really want to change it.” That’s not what Alice remarked on, but Kristen can’t help her remark regardless.

“It’s a good color,” Alice beams. “Don’t.”

Looking around for somewhere for them to sit, Kristen tries to guide Alice back, holding onto her elbows. “You must have done so much in the time since we last saw each other, too—come tell me all about it!”

Alice doesn’t budge. “I can’t—really get into it here—do you live around here? I work at this really disgusting bar, and my place is above it—I’d invite you there but _anywhere else_ is preferable.”

“I do, that’s fine, how can I get in touch with y—”

Alice presses a note in Kristen’s palm, the rough yarn of her fingerless gloves prickling against Kristen’s skin. “I’ve got a cell phone again. Just gimmie a call when you can. I’m actually on my way to work now, I gotta dash.” Alice throws her arms around Kristen once more, and Kristen only has moments to remember the feeling of Alice’s hair against her cheek, and to close her eyes and focus on the feeling of her friend returned to her life, in her arms, like she was so many times before, when she barely could walk.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” Kristen whispers, and Alice nods, before dashing off, leaving Kristen in the free-floating dust of the archived encyclopedias, her sweater warm from where her only _friend_ in this life has held her, touched her once again, for even the briefest flash.

⇻

 

There’s probably articles about her dead sister in the archives, somewhere, but she doesn’t go looking for them, uses the excuse that if she had to call Metropolis’ library system to ask for what Gotham’s doesn’t have, it would raise red flags, or that everything she needed to know she learned from the report Zhang, the man who made her ID, pulled up on his screen, but it’s simply easier to keep up the act if she doesn’t have to feel responsible for stealing an innocent woman’s life.

That concept is a little too close for comfort for Kristen.

Too similar to what’s already been done to _her_.

⇻

The air is turning crisp, and Kristen clutches her coat tight around her throat to ward off the chill. She needs a scarf—maybe she should stop and buy one, but ever since she looked at Alice’s gloves, it reminds her of the feeling of wool between her fingers, the gleam of metal needles flashing, quickly purling and knitting stitches, of knowing, intrinsically, what it would take to make a garment like that herself.

 _I know how to knit_.

Stopping in the street for a moment to consider that, Kristen rubs her palms against each other, wondering if there’s any calluses left (do calluses last that long?) to let her know if it was a constant hobby, or a one-time skill acquired possibly in her youth.

Maybe it’s a story she’s misremembered as reality, but Kristen hopes that this one thing can be _hers_ and hers alone, but there’s no conclusive evidence either way. The folder she would file this potential flashback away in, for now, remains blank. Her mind is laid out as such: the rows and rows, stacked on top of each other, stretching from ceiling to flood, packed full of empty notecards, reference points that lead nowhere, the nightmare version of her workplace.

It’s bleak, but at least it’s hers.

“Kristen…” a voice behind her gasps, like a prayer, like a curse.

This time she doesn’t startle, this time she keeps composed, hands clasped in each other, as she turns around to face—

The police cop standing behind her, his face lax and skin bleached white in shock.

Hearing a voice she recognized was what had startled Kristen before; she’s not used to recognizing _anything_. But the voice of someone who knows _her_ is beyond confusing because—what’s _different_ about it is that—it’s—

No one has _ever_ recognized her before. No one. Not even her own self.

“ _Kristen_ ,” the officer repeats.

And something instinctual inside Kristen clicks.

“I’m sorry?” she asks, hand on her chest.

“Kristen!” his eyes go wide and he starts breathing heavily. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints, how in the _hell_ are you alive? How—how am I seeing you right now? You’re _dead_ , that bastard killed you, he killed you and you can’t be—”

She can’t believe someone finally recognizes her. Someone from _before_.

For so long, Kristen has thought that would make her feel _real_ , make the identity she discovered after she was let out of the box by Fish and Alice _hers_ , instead of like something store-bought she wears around her neck, out of style and clashing with the rest of her. No, if someone had just _recognized her_ , it would all click, the puzzle would be solved, the feelings would make _sense_ …

She wants to say yes, _yes, yes, yes, that’s me, that’s me, you remember me, you know me, even though I don’t know myself_ , but…the impulse to lie is stronger.

Maybe it’s not lying.

Maybe it’s the new truth. The truth solely because it’s what Kristen knows the facts of, knows how it came to be, knows it because she is the one creating it, everyday, whereas “ _Kristin” Kringle_ is a story only others tell, and that makes it less from the start, less relatable, less integratable, less, less, _less_.

She looks straight into the cop’s wide eyes.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but I think you have me mistaken with someone else. My name’s Isabella.”

Kristen sucks in a mouthful of icy air and feels _calmed_. There’s something _beautiful_ about how easily the lie flows out of her throat, how convinced she is of its validity herself.

She’s not that Kristen.

She’s a new woman.

“No, no, that red hair, those glasses, I’d know that face anywhere,” the cop continues, still pallid and staring. “God help me, Kristen, I didn’t save you. I couldn’t. Ain’t none of us knew what he was gunna do and I just…” He leaps forward and taps her elbow quickly, then pulls back. “You’re _real_ , you really are _real_ , how in the devil’s name—”

“Please, sir, I don’t know who you _are_.”

His eyes water. “It’s Joe, _Joe_ , come on, you know me. Joe the Cop, that’s what everyone jokes, s’what they call me. We worked together, you used to bring me my files in the morning, used to help me pick what candy bar I should try that day—” Joe drops his forehead into his palm and his voice drops to a whimper. “Lord help me, he put your hand _in_ the vending machine, and I didn’t _see it_ , walked right past the bastard that morning and I coulda saved you, I’m so sorry, maybe it was too late on account of him killin’ you but see, we didn’t know you were _in_ the morgue, and then he chopped ya up and I—how are you _standing_ on account of him choppin’ you—”

_I’ve never heard any of this before; what is he talking about? Did they leave details out?_

Shock shivers through her mind, but she doesn’t let it show. “Sir, that’s—that’s _terrible_ , but I’m not who you think I am. Like I said, my name is Isabella.” Her voice cracks a little every time she says it, but it doesn’t stop her from saying it. _I can’t let him know, I can’t, not after all this time, he’ll think I’m a monster, too, and then who will help Fish and the others if I’m gone, if someone catches me? Who will help me?_ “I must look like your friend, but I’m not her, and I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about…”

They go through this a few more times before she can retreat. Soothing him, but not listening to his story by not even allowing him to finish it seems to calm him enough to get him to understand that it’s all just a big misunderstanding, not many people have red hair and she gets mistaken for others all the time…all in all, she’s pretty average-looking, it’s that one defining characteristic that makes her stand out…maybe it’s just shock and trauma making him think so unclearly, maybe he should go home and rest….

She clenches her sleeves down, pins the to her wrist by gripping the fabric taunt in her fists. Before she walks too far away, she does stop to look at the hand Joe stared at while he told his tale. She remembers how it used to feel like this hand in particular was going to _fall off_ when she was in Indian Hill. Her range of motion in it was bad up until recently—and now she’s unsure if she coped, or it just got better.

_Damn him, damn him for this! I didn’t need this!_

Kristen’s not even sure which man she’s angry with.

There’s a lick of the repressed rage in her core over what was done to her that she tries to drown down, back where it came from. It won’t do her any good.

_It won’t do me any good to get angry again. I’m a new woman. That’s over with._

And now it seems like she’s starting to believe it.

On her way home, instead of buying knitting needles and thick wool yarn, she stops at a costume shops she’s walked past for months and finds a wig that’s on clearance in the back of a costume shop, throws in some concealing cream for the stage with her order while she’s at it, and heads home, takes a painkiller, tries to sleep.

What happened can’t happen again.

⇻

Every day, she practices. Just in case.

“Oh, no-no-no, I’m sorry, you must have me mistaken for someone else,” she smiles, waving a hand at the imaginary other, pretending it’s not her own reflection staring back at her in the mirror. “My name isn’t Kristen!”

“No, no,” she drops the act, and her hands to the rim of the sink. Too friendly. She sounds like a waitress.

“No, sorry, that’s not my name. You must have confused me with someone else,” this attempt is said sternly, her mouth fixed into a flat line. The light above the sink flickers and it’s annoying and she never takes the time to just fix it, but she should.

Where there’s not so much on her mind, she swears she will.

“I’m sorry,” Kristen tries again, dropping a hand to her breastbone. “I’m not—my name is Isabella.” Her voice is smooth, gentle, melodic. Pieces of Alice’s warmth, elements of Fish’s grace and presence.

Kristen shivers involuntarily. Don’t they say that happens when someone walks over your grave? _Do I even have a grave?_

“My name is Isabella,” she smiles, turns a bit at the waist. “I’m Isabella.” More sentences come after that, rehearsal needed to make the lies second nature: _I’m a librarian. I live in the Burnley District. I just moved here from Metropolis. I went to college there. I’m Isabella. My name is Isabella._

 _I have a sister but we don’t talk._ That one might come in handy again, but she’ll work on that later.

 _I’m walking on_ someone else’s _grave_ , she retorts, fighting with herself, talking back to the person watching her in the mirror, talking to the empty room, talking to any version of herself still present. Grabbing the blonde wig by the temples, she tugs it back in place, bobby pins digging into her scalp, and continues running her lines.

Acting her part.

 _This isn’t what I set out to do_.

Kristen wants to tug the wig off and toss it away from her. The bathroom is covered in mirrors and every room of the apartment is bathed in green light, something Kristen can’t account for, nor make sense of. Why green? Why is it ever-present?

Fish _bought_ the place for her outright, after the first few months she lived here; now it’s full of things that make up her new life. The clothes, the personal care items she stocked up on, the costume makeup and wig, books she’s dragged home from the library.

There’s some boxes in the corner, full of former-Kristen Kringle’s effects. No one ever came to pick them up (luckily for her, she’s sure she’s supposed to suppose) from her old apartment building and the property manager of her old place left the boxes in the basement, to be gotten rid of sometime when he “got around to it.” The sister-story worked well for that purpose; it’s the only time she’s used it so far, and hopefully the last.

He didn’t recognize her.

The only box she’d been brave enough to open so far had what must’ve been in her over-the-sink cupboard: lipstick, foundation, face moisturizer, a fragrant soap.

Every brand was the same as the ones she’d bought herself at the store, weeks before she’d procured her own possessions back.

 _What am I_ , Kristen wonders again, always wonders. _And what am I trying to become?_

**⇉**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Thomas Calderone](https://twitter.com/tom_calderone/status/702919208070488066) ("Joe the Cop" himself) for the inspiration for crossing paths with…all of Kristen this time, and not _parts_. 
> 
> Did you notice the section dividers? I always make my section dividers relevant to my stories anymore; check my other recent works to see some examples. (Being a typography nerd is fun, okay?) 
> 
> **Thank you** for all the support you've shown this fic. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think so far of Kristen and her journey (that sadly we know how it started, where it's going, and how it will end, but she doesn't…) and I look forward to reading your thoughts. Thank you, thank you, again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please let me know your reactions so far as I prepare chapter two, where Kristen will being her life again—quite literally. We'll also see how Isabella Flynn becomes relevant to our protagonist…


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